NOTTINGHAM OPEN POETRY COMPETITION 2009
PRIZES: 1st: £300 2nd: £150 3rd: £75
and Merit Prizes of One Year’s subscription to
POETRY NOTTINGHAM
Adjudicator: Penelope Shuttle
Closing Date: 7th September 2009
1. The competition is open to anyone aged 16 or over.
2. Poems should be in English, unpublished, not accepted or submitted for publication elsewhere, and must be your original work.
3. Poems should not be entered in any other competition, or have previously been a prizewinner in any other competition.
4. Poems should be no longer than 40 lines.
5. Each poem should be typed on a separate sheet of A4 paper, and must not bear your name or any other form of identification. On a separate sheet of paper list your name, address, titles of poems submitted, and where you heard about this competition. No application form necessary.
6. Entry fee: £3.00 per poem or £10.00 for 4 poems.
7. Any number of poems can be submitted on payment of the appropriate fee. Cheques and postal orders should be made payable to Nottingham Poetry Society. No stamps, foreign currency or Irish P.O’s accepted
8.Winners will be notified by post in October 2009
9. Prizes will be presented at a public adjudication in Nottingham on 28th November 2009. All prizewinning poems will be published in Poetry Nottingham and a selection on this website. The decision of the adjudicator is final.
10. Entries should be addressed to: The Competition Secretary, 38 Harrow Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham NG2 7DU
To request further details, please contact us .
NOTTINGHAM POETRY SOCIETY OPEN POETRY COMPETITION 2008 RESULTS
Julia Copus – Adjudicator
1st: Caroline Price: Pothole
2nd: C.J.Allen: My favourite rooms in the gallery are these
3rd: Kate Rhodes: Spectacles
Merit Prizes were awarded to: Carol Beadle, Carol DeVaughn, Charles Evans, Jennifer Farley, Norbert Hirschhorn, Andrew Kelly, Sarah Leavesley and Anna Wigley
Commended were: Les Baynton, Kathleen Bell, Joan Condon, Barbara Daniels, Julia Deakin, Sheila Roe, Patricia Tyrrell, Huw Watkins, Louise Wilford and Margaret Wilmot
PRIZE WINNING POEMS FROM 2008 OPEN COMPETITION:
POTHOLE
It was a present to each other,
driving into the hills to meet
as if by chance, disguised already
as underworld creatures.
Their passion expressed
in this, the heartstopping moment
of going in, dropping three hundred feet
on ropes of water, the darkness
welcoming, the maze of streamways
open like arms.
The river which plumbs the cave is fast
and silent: all they can hear
is their own blood, pulsing.
Fish that live in lightless water
are blinder, they know, than love -
and their fingers touch
as they wade, their lamps’ soft eyes
turn the walls to velvet, textured
like the inside of a mouth.
How far can they be swallowed?
They crouch and crawl, squeeze through
the narrowest clefts
on a held breath, folding into smaller
and smaller versions of themselves.
Outside it is the tail end
of Christmas; their bright houses flicker
as rain begins again, saturating
already bursting ground.
The beck which enters the open shaft
swells to a torrent, waterfalls
merge into one. Each cave
fills like a fishbowl. deeper inside,
still holding hands, tuned
to each other – they are inseparable
now, and for some time at least
no-one will find them.
Caroline Price
*********************************************************
My favourite rooms in the gallery are these
unpeopled halls of humdrum local scenes.
The town before anyone knew to call it a town,
an irregular geometry of fields
with harrows and stiff horses, indeterminate peasants
sowing or reaping or standing around. A castle,
colossal in the middle distance, flags
and pennants ablaze, the perspective shot, an impossibly
angled moat somehow not spilling over.
A prospect of surrounding country, coils
of river-water, pools and cisters, copses,
canals, a whisper of smoke on the horizon,
commerce flexing and stretching. Civic buildings
receiving royalty, the local militia
glinting with pride, lead-white standing in
for splashes of daylight on their helmets and halberds.
Heroes of home and hearth, the faithful terrier
who roused the drowsing guard, the flying ace
who never made it to twenty-three, his medals
oxidising in a mahogany case.
Sweethearts under a tree, she with a parasol,
coyly counting petals, he in a frock-coat,
all buttons and tails, admiring his cavalryman’s boots,
while something forever unspoken passes between them,
vague as the unseen spiral of air that lifts
symbolic blossom then gently lets it fall.
A beach assailed by breakers, grey-faced women
in grey headscarves. A Waterfall from days
of the sublime. The echo of my footsteps
in conditioned air, the world beyond postponed,
its unbalanced clamour and outrage of colour exchanged
for ‘Storm Clouds over Willoughby House’, ‘Still Life
with Silver Pitcher’, ‘Colts Racing on the Downs’,
as I lean in to inspect more carefully
a filament of sable trapped in varnish,
the magnolia complexion of a saint,
a bucket in a puddle of Dutch sun.
C.J.Allen
*********************************************************
SPECTACLES
For Salvino d’Armato, d. 1317
They made the world more promising,
drew trees nearer to the ground,
established their leaves
not as a single frizz of green
but alive with shadow and movement,
a harpist’s fingers playing the breeze.
Walking through the market
you saw for the first time in twenty years
steam rising from the horses’ backs,
pit marks in the skin of apples,
cupids hiding in ironwork gates,
young girls’ faces, not blushing but rouged.
You ignored the stallholders’ jeers.
Suddenly owlish, unsteady on your feet,
you jumped across mile-wide puddles
to wait for your wife by the front door,
afraid to meet the woman
you had known only as a blur.
Kate Rhodes
The Contributors 2008
*****************************************************************
